We are digital media strategists who work with radio stations, local businesses, unions, and National companies on producing creative and running internet marketing campaigns. Within this site we will provide case studies and showcase up and coming technology news.

Latest Posts

Expanding your local business into different cities and even different states can be more challenging than you think. Google gives a lot of attention to local businesses so not having a physical address in a city you really want to do business in can be a big task. Marketing and search engine optimization nationally is a difficult mountain to climb and Ragle Dental was putting on their boots and starting that hike.

Ragle Dental Laboratory in Champaign, IL has been in business since 1979. They are a staple for dental laboratories in Champaign but wanted to spread their reach to other midwest cities including Chicago, IL and St. Louis, MO. The level of competition in dental laboratories isn’t super high, but spreading across multiple states makes it much more difficult.

Luckily, they started off with a very aesthetically pleasing website with easy navigation and great calls to action. We just needed to get visitors to the site and the process would be successful. Website optimization was a big factor in the success of Ragle Dental Laboratory. There were several pages without optimized meta tags and several pages with duplicate content. Being able to issue a service area that included Dental Laboratory in Chicago, IL and Dental Laboratory in St. Louis, MO was the beginning of their geographic reach. They started to rank for keywords in nearby cities like Dental Lab Bloomington, IL and Dental Lab Peoria, IL but are still fighting the uphill battle of the major cities.

Overtime Ragle Dental Laboratory will increase even more in the rankings as their website is sufficiently optimized and they have great content to boot. If you’re looking for a dental laboratory in Illinois visit Ragle Dental Laboratory and receive a free starter kit!

Some companies have had websites for years and know the importance of having a website and a web presence. Frequently, businesses will have a website created and let it sit stagnant for years without updated information, content, and pictures. Although your business may have been online with a website from 1997, things have changed. Staying up to date on your web presence is more important now than ever.

Americana Animal Hospital in Bloomington, Normal IL was one of those situations. A website had been created in the past and sure people could find it, but did it look professional? It actually gave off a bad first impression. There is a high percentage of people who will leave a website immediately if it doesn’t look professionally done. It was time to switch that around.

A new website was created for American Animal Hospital and brought it into the new year. A new appointment setting application was created so leads could be tracked online as well as making it easier for current clients to set up an appointment for their beloved pets. A smooth layout and great color palette immediately brings you in and creates a quicker line of trust. The contact information is now easier to find for prospective clients and current clients alike. Although being online is important, you want to make sure to do it correctly! Check out their website with the link above to see a great example of a strong local website.

Inbound marketing doesn’t always have to be tied to a business category that is popular or highly searched for. One of those business categories is sheet metal fabrication. Although it is searched for more than the average person may know, it’s definitely not comparable to categories such as fitness, food, or clothing. Inbound marketing isn’t specific to these popular categories and there are plenty of small businesses who have reaped the benefits of this strategy.

The Micar Company in Decatur, IL is a small business that specializes in sheet metal fabrication, roof coating, sandblasting, industrial painting and concrete. Competition is still heavy in these categories and the average cost of service can be substantial especially when doing commercial work. Businesses with high cost services like The Micar Company are perfect for inbound marketing and cost per click campaigns.

The Micar Company decided to purchase a new website to increase visibility as well as insuring professionalism in potential clients. There’s nothing worse than losing a lead because your website is missing information or is lackluster. Navigation is much more effective with the new layout and optimization for search engines like Google is imperative for their success. There is plenty of information for anyone looking for a contractor in any of their categories as well as ways to contact them. With advanced SEO techniques like Meta Titles and Descriptions, The Micar Company is beginning to stand out from the competition.

Every now and then there is an exceptional leader in one particular business category that just isn’t receiving the notoriety they deserve. For example, ZDI Inc. is a video conferencing and audio visual specialist that won a prestigious award that not a lot of other businesses can claim. ZDI Inc. was designated the Cisco Preferred Solutions Developer status in the Cisco Developer Network (CDN). Only one other company in the states and 3 others World Wide have achieved this designation. But how do people know about substantial successes like the one ZDI Inc. has achieved?

Competing nation wide is not an easy thing to do and isn’t something that changes over night. With that in mind, ZDI Inc. has implemented a thorough search engine optimization strategy. Adding additional content, optimizing their website for search engine results, and doing a test run with Google Adwords campaigns. ZDI Inc. has taken the route of running a marathon rather than a sprint by funneling marketing dollars through long term goals with search engine optimization.

Here is an example photo of one of the Cisco solutions that ZDI Inc. has developed

Internet marketing has long been a staple but it is finally picking up steam in different business categories and sizes. A case study we’ll look at today is about Lutz Corporation, a company that specializes in fertilizer spikes and feeding for palm trees, shrubs and citrus. It’s not a flashy category but goes to show you that internet marketing can really be useful any and everywhere.

Lutz Corporation is a national company that deals with plenty of competition. Because of this, new systems had to be implemented to compete against small local chains as well as national powerhouses. A team was brought in to conduct search engine optimization on the website and work to increase Google and Yahoo rankings to increase sales. On top of search engine optimization, Lutz Corp began to use Google Adwords to bring in leads. Putting together an adwords campaign brought in significant traffic and they were able to track the amount of purchases that led from this campaign as well. The ROI of the campaign itself is positive and a great option for an online company with the tracking ability.

If you’d like to see the improvements of the Lutz Corporation site or are looking for fertilizer spikes you can visit it here at www.lutzcorp.com

As content creators look to keep audiences interested and clicking on more assets, they would do well to consider audience composition, as research suggests demographics can have a substantial effect on how web users behave once they have found interesting content.

Research from content optimization firm nRelate shows that age is one major factor in how users engage with content online. An October 2012 survey found that younger US web users, especially younger males, had a high propensity to click on related articles and videos after reading online content. Older users tended to click on links to related content on a weekly basis, and women—especially older women—were more likely to be drawn to a story that featured a photo.

All groups were significantly more likely to click on articles rather than videos if they were linked to from content they found interesting.

For all groups, stories about local news, followed closely by national news, were the most likely to generate interest in further content. And for both genders, but especially for men, this behavior was more common among older web users. Drilling down into specific demographic groups, young women most often clicked on related content when they were reading about entertainment, men were significantly more interested than women in related sports content, and web users ages 18 to 34 were least interested in related home improvement content.

The research found that users across every demographic group preferred to click on links in search results; these links were used for research by 43% of respondents. Links at the bottom of articles that web users were already reading were popular with 25%, and were most popular among older women and least popular among young men. Just 7% said they were most likely to click on links they found on Facebook, though among 18- to 34-year-olds the proportion rose to 13% of men and 10% of women.

For years, marketers emphasized a build-for-the-desktop-first approach, with mobile serving as little more than a sideshow. However, rapid advances in smartphone and tablet ownership have changed that equation.

Consumers in the US may spend twice as much time today with desktop media as they do with mobile, but time spent with mobile is growing at 14 times the rate of the desktop, suggesting that the two could achieve parity inside a couple of years if both maintain a consistent trajectory.

Time is not the only way to measure this shift. A growing portion of internet traffic is coming from smartphones and tablets. Net Marketshare put mobile’s share of global browsing traffic at 10.3% in October 2012. This was the first time mobile had topped 10% of all browsing for the web analytics firm, and its advance might even be greater, as the figure “actually underestimates the total amount of browsing share on mobile devices, since [Net Marketshare’s] sample does not contain data on apps, like maps.”

In markets such as the US with high indices of smart device penetration, an even greater portion of internet traffic comes from smartphones and tablets. Online and mobile ad network Chitika estimated mobile’s share of web traffic in North America at 28% as of June 2012.

For key media and commerce drivers such as search, mobile accounts for a growing share of total activity. Some estimates put it at as much as one-third, according to figures cited by a recent Macquarie Investment Bank research note.

These shifts away from the desktop to smart devices explain why the mobile-first drumbeat, which rose in 2012, will only grow louder in 2013. Surveys have consistently showed the deleterious effects on consumer perception of websites that are not mobile optimized. And there is a mounting expectation among consumers that brands should even offer an app-enabled experience, certainly for the top two smartphone platforms if not also for tablets.

This is less a question of choosing between a mobile site or an app and more about prioritization. Even in an increasingly mobile-first world, websites remain focal points for brands and their customers alike.

More than half of US smartphone and tablet users plan to use their devices for holiday shopping, research indicates, and they are willing to actually buy more items via mobile this holiday season than ever before.
According to October research from Prosper Mobile Insights, 55.3% of all US tablet and smartphone users planned to shop with their devices this holiday season, including browsing, researching, making lists and making actual purchases. About half of that group will use their smartphones and tablets during the planning and research phases, while 42.6% will use the devices for actually shopping, in or out of stores.

Separate research from mobile ad firm Mojiva, released in November, found that smartphone owners found price comparison information the most helpful for holiday shopping on their phone, at 67%, followed closely by information about sales and coupons (64%). A comparatively low 30% said their phone would be most helpful for actually buying products.
But Mojiva did find smartphone owners were more open to making a wide variety of actual purchases using their phones. The most common purchase category considered was electronics, at 60%—up 9 percentage points over 2011. Likelihood of buying in every category except charitable donations increased year over year.

Mojiva also found that 31% of smartphone users said they had purchased a product after seeing a mobile ad, but other post-impression activities were much more common, including browsing a website (62%), downloading or redeeming a coupon (37%) or simply requesting more information (36%). Women were 6 percentage points more likely than men to say they had purchased a product after seeing a mobile ad, the September 2012 survey found